(Kathy Willens | AP) Toni Morrison at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York on April 1994. On being awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison's work was praised for its "visionary force and poetic import" and for giving "life to an essential aspect of American reality." Her novels, such as "Beloved," have shone a light on the racial prejudices that have afflicted her homeland.